by Mark Leyner
So you could always just leave Santa a plate of Swiss cheese. Believe me, he’ll eat it.
IS IT TRUE THAT THERE ARE MORE SUICIDES DURING THE HOLIDAY SEASON?
We hate to say this as writers, but you shouldn’t always believe what you read. The press and electronic media have persistently promulgated the myth that people are more likely to kill themselves at Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s than at any other time of the year. Over 30 percent of news reports on the subject still disseminate this misinformation. The myth is fueled by a kind of counterintuitive logic that severely depressed people become even more deeply depressed during this period of enforced good cheer. Not only does this turn out false, but there are actually fewer suicides during the holiday season than other times of the year. Data collected by the National Center for Health Statistics indicates that suicide rates are actually at their lowest in December, while peaking in the spring and fall. The speculation is that, at holiday time, people with a tendency toward depression have a stronger support system of family and friends than they would otherwise.
CAN YOUR TONGUE GET STUCK ON A FROZEN POLE?
Do you remember the classic 1983 movie A Christmas Story, in which nine-year-old Ralph “Ralphie” Parker and his loyal friend Flick are faced with a “triple-dog-dare,” and poor Flick ends up sticking his tongue to a frozen flagpole until the fire department comes to the rescue?
What’s the scientific explanation for this classic frozen faux pas? It’s simple. Metal is a very good conductor of cold, and on a frigid winter’s day, it’s likely that most metal objects outside—including fences, mailboxes, and utility poles—are cold enough to reach temperatures that are significantly below freezing. If you’re enough of a blockhead to actually accept this triple-dog-dare, here’s what will happen. When you put your moist tongue against the frozen metal surface, the moisture on your tongue rapidly freezes and sticks to the metal.
If the quaint stupidity of this practice really appeals to you, buy the action figure. Yes, that’s right! There’s a Flick figure that comes with a “frozen” flagpole that magnetically attracts Flick’s outstretched tongue. That way you can get all of the pleasure, with none of the pain.
CAN YOU GET DRUNK FROM EATING RUM CAKE?
A couple of shots of Jack Daniels and a beer will do the trick much more efficiently. But if you want to drown your sorrows in rum cake, it all depends on how you prepare it and how much you eat. Here’s a chart of the percentage of alcohol left in dishes following various methods of preparation.
Preparation Method
Alcohol Retained
Alcohol added to boiling liquid, and removed from heat
85%
Alcohol flamed
75%
No heat, stored overnight
70%
Baked, 25 minutes, alcohol not stirred into mixture
45%
Preparation Method
Alcohol Retained
Baked or simmered, alcohol stirred into mixture:
15 minutes
40%
30 minutes
35%
1 hour
25%
1.5 hours
20%
2 hours
10%
2.5 hours
5%
Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture
After perusing several reliable rum cake recipes, we found that you usually put in about a half cup of rum and bake for approximately 1 hour. In the end, there’d probably be less than an ounce of alcohol left in the entire cake. So you’d have to have either a very low tolerance for alcohol or the capacity to consume an outlandish amount of baked goods to get hammered on rum cake.
WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF A MORBIDLY OBESE MAN GOT STUCK IN A CHIMNEY?
This question is an obvious attempt to diss Santa Claus.
First of all, Santa’s ability to nimbly traverse rooftops, and maneuver himself down and then back up chimney stacks and through flues, hearths, and fireplaces of all sorts—all the while carrying an enormously heavy bag of gifts—obviously demonstrates an athleticism and an agility for a big man that belies the very meaning of “morbidly obese.” (The term morbidly obese is applicable to people who are 50 to 100 percent—or 100 pounds—above their ideal body weight OR who have a body mass index value (BMI) greater than 39.)
At a juncture in his career, when you’d expect him to be slowing down, Santa is actually putting up mind-boggling stats that surpass anything he’s achieved thus far. Just compare him to other mythic icons, like Hercules or Popeye or Mothra, at similar stages in their lives. After completing his record-breaking 12th Labor (bringing Cerberus up from Hades), Hercules, by his own admission, was unable to maintain the intense drive that had distinguished his career. Popeye, of course, retired and opened up a chain of fast-food restaurants. And Mothra was lured to his death by a giant porch lightbulb constructed by Japanese scientists.
During Christmas of 2005, Santa delivered some 3.9 billion toys, shattering the mark he’d set the previous season. This has, predictably, fueled scurrilous and completely unsubstantiated rumors of steroid use.
For the record, Santa Claus has adamantly denied ever using steroids or performance-enhancing drugs of any kind, and he has offered to submit himself to year-round random testing.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Mark Leyner is the author of five books: Et Tu, Babe; My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist; Tooth Imprints on a Corn Dog; I Smell Esther Williams; and The Tetherballs of Bougainville. He has written scripts for a variety of films and television shows. His fiction and nonfiction continues to appear regularly in The New Yorker, Time, GQ, and Travel & Leisure.
William Goldberg, M.D., is a practicing physician at Bellevue Hospital and NYU Medical Center, a painter, and a writer. His paintings have been exhibited in New York City and are held in private collections in Madrid, Sydney, New York, and San Francisco.
Also by Mark Leyner and Billy Goldberg, M.D.
WHY DO MEN HAVE NIPPLES?
Hundreds of Questions You’d Only Ask a Doctor
After Your Third Martini
Copyright © 2006 by William Goldberg, M.D., and Mark Leyner
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Three Rivers Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. www.crownpublishing.com
Three Rivers Press and the Tugboat design are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Leyner, Mark.
Why do men fall asleep after sex? : more questions you’d only ask a doctor after your third whiskey sour / Mark Leyner and Billy Goldberg.
1. Medicine—Miscellanea. I. Goldberg, Billy. II. Title.
R706.L48 2006
610—dc22
2006012889
eISBN: 978-0-307-35271-2
v3.0